


In His Shoes

by afewreelthoughts



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, M/M, Magic, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:24:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What, Jimmy?  You’d never believe in magic?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Shoes

“I can’t believe she kept it,” Thomas stared at the book in Jimmy’s arms.  “I can’t believe you found it.”  His voice grew hard, his words stiff and distant.

It was late evening at the house.  Everyone else had gone to bed, when Jimmy had found a leather-bound book at the bottom of an old wardrobe in the servants’ quarters.  He had been rifling through the old wardrobe, searching for a new pair of trousers.  A hole had burned in the back of them, standing too close too the over.  It were Daisy’s stupid fault, pushing him out of her way, he knew it, but no one agreed with him.  He hadn’t found a single pair of footmen's trousers that fit him, and he was about to throw the book down the hall in frustration, when he opened its cover first.  As he flipped through the dusty, yellow pages in wonder, Jimmy could think of nothing but telling Thomas... only to discover that he already knew all about it.  There really were nothin’ new to be discovered in this house. 

“Where did you find O’Brien’s book?”

“I weren’t lookin’ through her stuff or nothin’,” Jimmy snapped. He put the book on the table in front of Thomas.   “It were just at the bottom of a wardrobe in the servants’ quarters.  Somebody must’ve put it away there when she up and left in the middle of the night.”  Thomas ran his fingertips over the worn brown leather.  “Was it hers?” Jimmy asked, though he knew it was a dumb question.  Thomas never mocked him when he asked about the obvious.  Sometimes you needed to, to keep a conversation going.

“We found it in the old bookstore in Ripon on our day off and bought it for a lark,” Thomas said.  One of his nervous smiles pushed at the corners of his mouth.  He opened the front cover.  Jimmy caught the scent of Thomas’s cologne above pomade, tobacco, and old, old pages.  He smelled like lavender and musk, a concoction too expensivefor Jimmy to afford.  It must have taken Thomas years to save for something so luxurious.  Jimmy leaned in, despite himself.

And then he leaned in farther to read aloud the words written on the first page:

“ _A Guide to Practical Magic in England_.  So she really were an old witch?” He smirked and nudged Thomas, hoping to lighten what had become a suddenly somber mood.  But Thomas’s voice remained sincere.  “I told you, we bought it in Ripon on a lark.  We had daft fun looking through the old thing that night.”

Jimmy leaned over Thomas’s shoulder and began to flip the pages.  “Ever...” his throat tickled in embarrassment. “...try any out?”

Thomas lit a cigarette, moving with excruciating slowness.  First he pulled back his jacket to reach his cigarette case.  He placed it on the table.  He pulled out his lighter from his trousers’ pocket.  He picked out a single cigarette between the stiff fingers of his left hand.  His tongue touched its very end, his red lips wrapped around it, and he bit down.  He lifted his lighter.  It kissed the cigarette.  He took a deep breath.  When the smoke cleared, Thomas Barrow leaned back in his chair, relaxed and indolent.

“I did... once...” he said wistfully.

Jimmy’s heart was racing.

“...it didn’t work, ‘n O’Brien wouldn’t touch the stuff.  Said we had all the magic we needed up ‘ere.”  He tapped his temple.  “Not sure if she were right.”  The tip of his cigarette disappeared between lips again.

Jimmy continued to flip the pages of the book and tried desperately to keep his voice careless.  “Think... that it’s real.... at all? The least little bit?”

“Someone must’ve thought it were.  Or thought enough folks would believe it to make it worth ‘is while.”  When he turned to face Jimmy and he saw the awed, hungry look in the young man’s face, Thomas’s eyes sparkled and his mouth broke into a smile.  “What, Jimmy?  You’d never believe in magic?”

Jimmy searched Thomas’s face for mockery, sincerity, any emotion, any motivation he could put his finger on, but Thomas Barrow remained unreadable.  These moments of inscrutability came few and far between since they had become friends, but they happened often enough to remind Jimmy that Thomas Barrow was a true mystery.  And it unnerved him.

He met Thomas’s grey eyes.  “I – I dunno.”

“Whether ya believe in magic?”

They sparkled again, two grey stars, and Jimmy’s stomach somersaulted.  He cleared his throat. “D’ya mind if I took a look at it tonight?” he asked Thomas.

At the raised eyebrows he received, Jimmy rolled his eyes.  “Just curious is all.”

“’Course you can, Jimmy.” Thomas closed the cover and handed him the book.  Another drag on the cigarette clouded the space between them with pale mist.  The worn leather felt heavy in Jimmy’s hands.  “It’s a funny old book.”

 

~

 

Back in his room that night, Jimmy flipped fast through the yellowing pages.  He was looking for something, but he felt too tired to name it: some spell to part that cloud that always surrounded his best friend, with or without the aid of a cigarette.  He flipped through love spells, spells for health and good fortune.  He flipped until his fingers hovered on

_A Spell to Know Your Lover’s Mind_

Thomas was nothing like a lover to him, and Jimmy objected to the very concept of the spell: if he had a lover, he wouldn’t need magic to know her mind, and she wouldn’t need it to know his.  They would have no secrets from each other.  But the words seemed close enough to what he sought that he read on.

_“The following being a spell to know the mind of your beloved.  Fall asleep with a sachet of the following ingredients and a lock of your beloved’s hair beneath your pillow, you shall know them for the time you sleep.”_

There followed a litany of strange ingredients that were at once odder and more mundane than he would have expected.  A leaf caught on an autumn day that had never touched the ground, a pinch of sugar, a single white linen thread, and more.  There was no eye of newt and tongue of dog... which disappointed Jimmy.  This was supposed to be magic.  Furthermore, if the charm were impossible, Jimmy could only fantasize about the results.  As it was, though, this little charm seemed just within the realms of possibility, and as such, he knew he must try it.

In the days that followed, Jimmy set about collecting the ingredients for the spell, until all that was left was a lock of hair.  He could sneak into Thomas’s room anytime, he knew, but the afternoon he’d rushed from setting the table for dinner to scale the stairs to the servants’ quarters, he hesitated in Thomas’s open door.

What if the damn thing didn’t work?

The past few days had become a game that Jimmy used to convince himself his life were not ordinary.  Something more to look forward to than his next half-day.  Now here he was, about to do this great thing he’d planned for so long.  What if it meant nothing at all?  His stomach lurched.  Wouldn’t it be better to preserve some illusion?

His shoes scuffed the grime on the floor, and Jimmy leaned against the doorframe.

What if it didn’t work?  What if it did?

“Jimmy?  What’re ya doin’ here?” Thomas called from down the hall.

“Thomas! I was...”

“You know I don’t have free time like you do to hang about our rooms...” The ends of Thomas’s butler jacket flared out behind him, as he slipped through the air.

“I don’t... have any more free time than you, Underbutler,” Jimmy whined.

Thomas swept into his room, opened a drawer and pulled out a fresh pair of white gloves.  He slipped them onto his bare hands.  He didn’t stop moving once, his body made of fluid motion.  The clear light of early afternoon caught on his slick black hair.

“’Course not.  Just avoidin’ work ‘n waitin’ for a scolding from Carson, are you?”  Thomas said, a smile creeping up his cheeks.

“Yeah – that’s all.”  Jimmy shrugged.

Thomas’s feet turned down the hall, back the way he had come, and Jimmy followed.  No point in poking around now.  Halfway down the stairs to the servants’ hall, Thomas called over one shoulder.  “Read that old book any?”

“What?  No!  Why?  Maybe,” Jimmy spluttered, trailing Thomas as quickly as he could.

Before Thomas decided to respond, they had reached the final few steps.

“Mr. Kent!”  Jimmy turned at the sound of Mr. Carson’s voice. “You’re needed in the bootroom.

With a dirty look in Thomas’s direction, that bloody went unnoticed, Jimmy rolled his eyes and followed Carson to the bootroom.  “What now?”

“His lordship’s boots need polishing.”

Jimmy groaned.  “That’s a valet’s job.  Where’s Bates when he’s got work to do?”

“Mr. Bates is occupied with his job at the moment.  You, however, are not.”

Jimmy slouched and pouted until he poked his head into the bootroom.  On the table was a wooden hairbrush, just like the one he’d seen so many, many times on Thomas’s bedside table.  He pulled a few strands of dark hair from the brush and stuffed them in his pocket.  

 

~

 

That night, Jimmy went up to bed early.  He had collected all of the ingredients into a small cotton bag, as specified.  He tied in the sparse hairs to the bag with a pink ribbon, as specified (and bought at the price of great embarrassment in Ripon) and tucked it beneath his pillow.  He changed quickly into his nightclothes, turned off the lights, and lay on top of the bedcovers.

Jimmy’s heart was racing so badly that he feared he’d never sleep, and then he’d never even see if the spell worked, because he supposed he had to be asleep, and he really should get underneath the covers, because he’d never sleep if...

 

~

 

“It was your idea to paint the room pink, John,” he heard Anna’s voice say faintly, as if from a great distance.

“I know,” a far deeper voice rumbled through Jimmy’s body. “I said whoever picked the color has good taste.”

Jimmy’s vision cleared, as if rising from deep and murky water.  Before he could register what he was seeing, a searing pain shot up his leg.  He cried out, but it made no sound.  Instead, the deep voice continued.  “But not better taste than you.”

 _Fucking hell,_ Jimmy thought.  _What have I done?_

John Bates lifted his bulk from the chair he was sitting in and crossed the room to his wife.

_Please don’t kiss her.  Please, please don’t..._

But Jimmy discovered that Mr. Bates couldn’t hear him, and what felt an age later, he woke in a sweat and threw the bag of damned bloody magic against the wall.

 

~

 

“Sleep well, Jimmy?”  Thomas asked him the next morning over breakfast.

“Hmm?” Jimmy blinked multiple times in answer.  He lay awake the rest of the night after his close encounter with the Bateses and made a lengthy mental note to return the book of spells to Thomas at the soonest opportunity.  Magic weren’t worth the bloody trouble.

“He asked if you’d slept well,” said Anna.

“I... didn’t sleep much,” he said, quickly looking away to avoid Anna’s gaze.  He thought he might die of shame if he looked her in the eyes.  To fill the silence, he said the first thing that came into his head.  “How’s your leg, Mr. Bates?”

Bates fixed Jimmy with a look of complete shock.  “It... is... well, it’s...”

Jimmy realized the breakfast table had fallen silent, and that everyone was staring in his direction.  Molesley had frozen with a piece of half-chewed toast hanging in his open mouth.

“It is alright.  A few years ago, after the war, I had some surgery done.  It’s been... well ever since.  Thank you, Jimmy.”

“You’re welcome.”  Jimmy tried to salvage the situation with a winning smile, then wolfed down the rest of his breakfast and set to work as quickly as possible.

Why did no one ever write about the annoyance that magic could bring into a man’s life? The awkwardness, the irritation?  Why was it always tales of grandeur?  Jimmy concluded that not a single writer who’d ever lived knew the first thing about magic, as he desperately tried to keep his eyes open and focused on the silver platter he was polishing.

He started at the sound of a gently knock.  Thomas stood still in the doorway, almost primly, Jimmy thought. "Jimmy, I was wondering - " 

"Oh, Thomas, so glad you’re here.  I want to say...”

"Want to say what, Jimmy?" he said, and fixed him with the softest gaze in the world.

Want to say I want to give you your book back had been the plan.  But the words caught in his throat.  He had to know what was behind those soft eyes.  He had to.  No matter what 

“Bates left his hairbrush in the bootroom," he said.

Thomas blinked in shock. "That keepin' you up nights?"

Jimmy smiled back and rolled his eyes. "It's a disturbin' thought, the Bateses leavin' their things about the house.  Just tell him to not leave his disgusting hair around the house, if you get the chance."

Thomas nodded, serious again, all of a sudden, and looked as though he might say something.  But he just nodded again and left.

Thomas was oddly quiet the rest of the day, and he left the servants' hall immediately when Jimmy came in for dinner.  But he left behind a single, dark hair on the mantelpiece, which Jimmy pocketed instantly.

 

~ 

 

Jimmy took the stairs two at a time the moment his duties were done that evening.  If anybody at supper wondered where he was, they should have the good sense to remember he hadn't slept the night before.  He pulled off his gloves and tossed his jacket across the bag of the small, thin wooden chair in his room and kicked the door shut.  He tied the new hair to the small magic back, thrust it underneath his pillow, lay down, and closed his eyes.  

 

~

 

He was delighted to hear Thomas's voice as his vision cleared.  "Miss Baxter, I'm touched by your concern, but I'm just fine."

Out of the murky air, an image of Thomas's face resolved itself, a deep frown lining his cheeks and lips.  The body Jimmy was in looked down, past two bosoms, at the sewing in her hands.

 _Oh, bollocks!_ Jimmy yelled.  And then he realized,  _I haven't got any bollocks._

"You don't look it is all, Mr. Barrow."

Thomas said nothing to that, just pulled a long drag on his cigarette.

"Has it something to do with Jimmy?"

Thomas and fought off a cough. "D'you bloody think he's your business, Miss. Baxter?" he snapped.  A cloud of white smoke obscured his figure.

"Thought you said everybody in this house was my business, Mr. Barrow."

"Yeah, well, he's not.  Not a bit of him."

"He likes me better than you do, you know that?" Phyllis Baxter smiled.  Her sewing continued throughout their conversation, and so quickly that Jimmy started to worry for the wellfare of her fingertips.  "Most everyone does."

"What's that supposed to mean?  Am I supposed to be jealous, my best friend taking a fancy to you?"

"It's supposed to mean that maybe your little feud with... taking a fancy to me?"

Thomas looked stricken with guilt or horror when she next met his eyes.

"You think he's taken a fancy to me?" She laughed then, a light and delightful sound. "I'm hardly his type, what with him chasing after Ivy last year?"

When she looked up again, Thomas's features were set in stone.

Carson cleared his throat.  Phyllis Baxter looked up to see a look of concern on his face.

"Have either of you seen James?  Molesley's looked everywhere for him."

"He might be in his room," Phyllis suggested.  "What with him not having slept the night before."

"Excellent thought, Baxter.  Thomas, do you mind checking on him?"

"Not at all." Thomas gave a forced smile and started out of the servants' hall and up the stairs to his room.

_Fuck.  Fuck, fuck, shit!  Wake up Jimmy!_

He woke with a start in his own body when Thomas knocked on his door.  "Jimmy?  You in there?"

"Yes!" he called.  "Come in!"

"You all right, Jimmy?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine."

"You sound like you've just run a mile or..." Thomas quieted as it occurred to him what else a man could do, lying alone on his bed, that would make him sound like he'd just run a mile.

"I'm not doing _that_ , Thomas!" he grimaced.

"Oh, right," Thomas's gaze fell on the spellbook, still open at the foot of Jimmy's bed.  

Jimmy lunged forward and slammed the book shut.  "Been meaning to give this back to you all day."  He handed the book to a terribly confused Thomas, who feigned interest in the book until he found the extra ribbon Jimmy had used to mark his place, and then an eyebrow shot up.  "A Spell To Know Your Lover's Mind?"

Jimmy felt he might die, right then and there, expire of humiliation on the spot.

"Stupid idea," Thomas said.  "If you've got a lover, what do you need magic to know their mind for?  If you want to know something, you'd ask."

"I know, right!  What sort of daft idiot would think he needed a spell like that?" Jimmy said, pushing the small bag further underneath his pillows.

"Right you are, Jimmy."  And then those soft, soft grey eyes again.

"Well, maybe," Jimmy scratched the back of his neck.  "Maybe someone who didn't think he physically, I mean, even could ask what he wanted to ask..." and now his heart was racing again. "But he needed to know - something - badly.  He might."

"Really?" Thomas said listlessly, letting his good hand wander through his hair.  He pulled a few strands from his head and let them fall on the dresser by the door.  "Night, Jimmy."

When Thomas's footsteps faded down the hall, Jimmy cocked his chair beneath the doorknob.  He pulled the few strands of Thomas's hair close to his heart, along with the bag of magic ingredients, lay down, and closed his eyes.

 

~

 

Heavy.  His first thought in Thomas's body was that he felt heavy.  Not a bad thing for sure, but a different sensation than Jimmy was used to.  Heavy stomach, heavy shoulders, heavy weights in his mind and chest.  Thomas's hands shook as he disrobed, readying himself for bed, surely.  He carefully folded each article of clothing, until he wore only a thin undershirt and his trousers.  He knelt on his bed, and the springs creaked under his weight.  He opened his trousers, then, and let his right hand slip between his legs.

 _Dear god,_ Jimmy thought.   _What is he doing_ this _for_ now _?  Thought of it visiting me? Disgusting!_

Thomas's hand ran over every ridge and vein in his cock, slowly at first.  It was heavy, along with the rest of him.  A groan came from somewhere deep within Thomas's body.  His hand reached further back to fondle his balls.

_God, he's good at this.  I mean, who wouldn't be?  It's his own cock, not yours, Jimmy._

When Thomas hand returned to his cock, all gentleness had deserted him, and he pulled at himself hard, making his entire body shudder.

 _Getting off quickly before dinner,_ Jimmy thought.   _I should try it sometime,_ but his thoughts were savagely interrupted by the word

"Jimmy."  Thomas's hand moved faster.  " _Jimmy_."

There came fast and heavy strokes that left him gasping, and then Thomas came off in his hand, dripping down onto the sheets, and Jimmy came out of sleep with a start.

Now.  He had to go now, or he wouldn't have the guts ever again.

Jimmy pulled the chair out from in front of his door and raced to Thomas's room.  He knocked on the door, and Thomas opened it immediately.

For a while Jimmy just stared up at him and let those gentle eyes drink him in, sweating and gasping as though he'd run a mile between his own door and Thomas's.  He fancied that, in a way, he had.

Jimmy couldn't stop the smile from creeping up his cheeks.  "Thought you didn't believe in magic."

With that, Thomas wrapped one arm around his waist and brushed his lips against Jimmy's, butterfly-soft.  "Never said that."  Then Thomas kissed him again, and Jimmy had to admit that magic - damned bloody nuisance - was good for something after all.


End file.
